Southern Door is off to a promising start as it looks to contend for the Packerland Conference high school softball championship.

The Eagles built a big lead and held on to beat defending champion and preseason favorite Oconto, 9-7, Thursday in their season opener at Oconto.

"Overall, I was very pleased," said Eagles coach Pat Delcore. "You're up against the defending conference champs, it's our first game of the season and we have to play on the road. So all things considered, it's a good win. Very encouraging, but there's a long, long way to go."

The Eagles built a 7-2 lead behind some clutch hitting and good base running. Hanna Mallien had a two-out RBI single in the first inning, Kelsey Pavlik drilled a one-out RBI double in the second, and Sam Renard hit a two-out RBI single in the fifth that was followed by a successful double-steal with Erin Tadych scoring on the play.

"Offensively, we executed the things we needed to do to win the game," said Delcore. "When we needed hits, we got them. When we needed to get bunts down, we did (Alyssa Dantoin had a bunt single and two sacrifices). In addition to that, I thought we ran the bases wisely."

Oconto made the game interesting with three runs in the fifth inning and two in the sixth, but the Eagles didn't waver. Megan Pavlik hit an RBI sac fly in the sixth and Renard smacked an RBI single in the seventh to help the Eagles fend off the Blue Devils.

Renard finished with two hits and two RBIs, and Kelsey Pavlik doubled and singled to give the Eagles a big boost from the bottom of the order. Renard batted seventh and Pavlik ninth.

"As coaches, we got together and made up the lineup and our initial response was I wonder if anyone in the conference can match our 7, 8, 9 batters," said Delcore. "And right away in game one, (Renard and Pavlik) were two of our hottest bats. They kept hitting the ball hard."

The Eagles also played errorless defense, with 12 groundball outs. Shortstop Megan Pavlik had five assists, pitcher Mallien had three and third baseman Gabby Atkins had two, including a nice backhanded play in the seventh inning. Mallien pitched a complete game, with four strikeouts, for the win.

"Oconto had a couple (bloopers) that ended up being hits that there was nothing we could do about," said Delcore. "But other than that the infield made basically every play they had to make."